GS1, Global Standards,[1] is a neutral, not-for-profit, international organization that develops and maintains standards for supply and demand chains across multiple sectors.
With local Member Organizations in over 110 countries,[2] GS1 works with communities of trading partners, industry organizations, governments and technology providers and responds to their business needs through the adoption and implementation of global standards.
GS1 has over a million member companies across the world, executing more than five billion transactions daily using GS1 standards.[3]
Contents
GS1 standards
Most companies initially come to GS1 to get a bar code number for their products. However, GS1 standards provide a much wider framework for supply chain visibility. The current architecture of GS1 standards is as follows:
- Identify: Standards for the identification of items, locations, shipments, assets, etc.. and associated data
- Capture: Standards for encoding and capturing data in physical data carriers such as barcodes and RFID tags
- Share: Standards for sharing data between parties
GS1 identification standards do not provide identification of country of origin for a given product. Member companies may manufacture products anywhere in the world.[4]
Links to other international standards organisations
GS1 partners with the following international standard bodies:
- ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. GS1 is approved to submit standards as Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) through the JTC1 PAS Transposition Process.[5]
- ISO/IEC JTC 1, the Joint Technical Committee responsible for information and communication technology standards
- UN/CEFACT, the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business
- ITU-T, the International Telecommunications Union standardization sector
History
Key dates in GS1's history are as follows:[6]
- 1973: Industry leaders in the United States select a single standard for product identification—the Universal Product Code symbol—over seven other options. Still in use today, the U.P.C. was the first GS1 barcode.
- 1974: The Uniform Code Council (UCC) is established in the United States as a not-for-profit standards organization
- 1974: A pack of Wrigley's gum becomes the first product to be scanned with a GS1 barcode in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, United States.
- 1977: The European Article Numbering (EAN) Association is established as an international not-for-profit standards organization. With a head office in Brussels, Belgium, the EAN Association has 12 founding Member Organizations from European countries.
- 1990: The Uniform Code Council (UCC) and EAN International (EAN) sign a cooperative agreement formalizing their intent to co-manage global standards.
- 2005: A new name for the organization, GS1, is launched worldwide.
See also
- List of GS1 country codes
- Global Trade Item Number
- Global Document Type Identifier
- Global Location Number
- Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)
- Global Electronic Party Information Register (GEPIR)
- Serial Shipping Container Code
- GS1 EDI
- EPCglobal: global standards for RFID object tags
- Global Product Classification GPC
- GS1 US maintainer of Universal Product Code (UPC numbers)
Notes and references
- ^ "How We Got Here". GS1.
- ^ "GS1 Annual Report". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- ^ "About GS1". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- ^ "Prefix list", BarCodes & Identification, GS1.
- ^ "Approved PAS Submitters". ISO. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- ^ "Historic Timeline". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
External links
- Official website
- "Organization timeline", About, GS1.
- Annual Report (2013–2014) (PDF), GS1.